The invention relates to a method of handling phone numbers to be stored in a phone number database memory when all memory locations are full. The invention furthermore relates to a phone having such a database memory.
It is very convenient to use the phone number database as a phone book, because a call may be established easily from the database. However, it is desired to create the phone number database on the SIM card. The resulting database will follow the SIM card and thus the phone subscription instead of the phone. When the SIM card is transferred from one phone to another, the database will follow the SIM card. However only a limited number of memory locations (typically about 100) will be available in the SIM card memory.
The user may typically save about 100 phone numbers having up to 30 digits and an associated name of about 15 letters. These data may vary from SIM card supplier to SIM card supplier. The phone numbers will typically be stored in serially numbered memory locations, e.g. 1-100. A group of phone numbers--typically the numbers stored in the memory locations 2-9--will be accessible as short dialing numbers, which means that in the idle mode of the phone the user can make a call to a phone number stored in e.g. location #3 by depressing the "3" key for e.g. 0.5-1.0 second.
When such a database becomes full and the user tries to store a new number, this will be rejected until the contents of one of the memory locations have been deleted.